Hey all,
Just got my E8400 up and running (after a massive "I've shorted my board with a loose fan connecter" panic yesterday). However, although i did overclocking on my old 3200+, C2D OC's seem a lot more confusing. On the board i'm using, Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI, the overclocking menu gives me the FSB value, but it's at QDR, rather than the much easier to understand SDR that i've been so used to in the past. My old understanding of overclocking is that FSB * Multi = CPU speed (let's not even go into how memory OC's were handled in relation to FSB speed). Put simply, generally OC's i put in just worked.

However, OCing on the C2D platform seems to have taken a new, rather unfamiliar and scary twist. How do i go about OCing on the C2D platform?

I tried upping the FSB speed until i got the desired CPU speed (Yes, going for 4Ghz immediately wasn't exactly ideal, but i've heard great things about the E8XX series), and then sorting out the memory OC, since i'd set the board to Unlinked so i could control each manually. Even trying at 3.6Ghz and there's no luck.

I'm unsure what it is, but a lot of it just doesn't make sense. I bought an IFX-14 CPU cooler along with a Xilence 120mm RedWing fan purposely to overclock the chip. Reading reports of them reaching 4.4Ghz without a problem, and then me sat scratching my head at the whole situation does make me a little "upset".

So, any tips on how i go about OCing something that's only got a 9.0x max multi, a 1333mhz stock FSB, and amazing potential? (Please don't point me to the guide at Hexus). I want to understand, and i have tried, but realising again and again i don't understand it is when it's time to ask for help.

Cheers,
Scott.

EDIT: Can manage 3.15Ghz without increasing voltage (although i gave it an extra 0.05v just to be safe), but somewhere between there and 3.6Ghz is where it's "unPOSTable". The memory seems to overclock much higher now without problems (980Mhz is as high as i've gone so far, gonna try for 1Ghz, and then maybe 1066Mhz). Also, even with the CPU cooler i have, it still stays at 52C idle and 56-58C load. I don't know about you, but that seems a little high, considering it's an aftermarket cooler too. It seems to be like that at stock too, and no matter on the OC i put into it, provided i can get into Windows to see the temp, it seems to have the same temps. I dunno if i should be worried or not, but the fact the cooler isn't even getting warm to the touch does give me a little cause for concern. Also, due to the layout of my case, i wasn't able to install the smaller "back of motherboard" cooler, but only the top one, perhaps this is what's "gone wrong"?

EDIT 2: After installing Speedfan, it now states that the CPU temperature is 26c idle, and 27c while calculation Super Pi to 4M (21 iterations). Personally, based on being able to actually feel it not getting even warm, i tend to trust Speedfan more.

I'd try and help you, but I really don't have a clue about that board...
Bios & Chipset update?
I've read other posts regarding the new 45nm Duo that they had to update their bios for their boards before it worked right...

Yeah, i updated the BIOS and it's working, and i'm slowly learning my way around C2D overclocking. ATM, i've got it at 3.3Ghz (366.7 x 9.0) and the RAM running at 1000Mhz at 5-5-5-15-2T.

However, last night, i feared the worst as it kept crashing at stock. I assumed my new system was going the same way my old one did. However, it appears that the latest 8.3 Catalyst drivers are causing BSODs for some people. After finding a solution (DAAMIT the Catalyst for BSOD - The INQUIRER), rebooted and all seems fine again, and i got clock speeds closer to where i want them to be, even if only by 150Mhz/20Mhz CPU/RAM.

I think however, that it may be my board holding me back somewhat, it just doesn't seem to be a great clocker without putting 1.31v through the NB. I dunno about NB voltage, it's not something i've considered, and it's not something i did when i was trying to OC my old Athlon 64 4600+ (which may explain why it overclocked so badly).

I needed help understanding how to overclock on the C2D/LGA775 platform, as it was a lot more complicated than the A64 was, mostly due to different modes (Linked, unlinked, etc) and FSB:RAM ratios. I'm happy to report that the chip is now running at a decent speed with "idle" temps of 22C. Thats without C1E or EIST, mainly because those would limit the OC potential and probably cause all manner of stability problems. I still want to reach that 3.6Ghz, and then close the gap between there and 4Ghz eventually.

You should have posted this in the Intel Motherboard CPU section of the forum...it would have gotten more notice.
I'm surprised nobody else has posted as to your issues as they are a lot more knowledgeable than I...

I'll do a little investigating tomorrow, but I seem to remember reports of the board maxing out around 375 when it came out so I never gave it a second thought, figuring even a good bios would only net 425 at best.

I know abit updated the bios to support 45nm CPU's, but to what extent they went other than a microcode update I'm not sure of. I'll see what I can dig up and post back.

After some looking around, and a few PM's to friends I am finding out that while some bios updating can make the 45nm CPU's run in 650i/680i board, the actual physical layout of the board is not correct so overclocking is pretty much dead. The 650i was out long before the 45nm CPU's so it would be the place where my suspicions lie.

There were a few references to an nvidia tech doc, but the links were dead and I cannot seem to dig it up.

Ah, that does explain why i'm not able to OC the CPU much. I'll be moving to a new board in a few weeks. Thanks anyway, i really appreciate it as my knowledge is somewhat inferior to what it was, almost in a "When i learn something new, it pushes old stuff out of my brain" sorta way .

Any suggestions on a choice for a new board? I'm moving to 2 SATA drives, i may want to RAID them. Also, since i've decided against SLi due to hearing WoW doesn't like it, that's not so essential any more. The main thing is a good clocker, RAID support, DDR2-1066 support. I figure that with 4Gb of DDR2-1066, i should be able to pretty much max out my OC without great difficulty. I'm also probably gonna be going back to XP to get spanning support across both monitors and to get rid of the bloat that Vista brought (add to that the fact that driver support for Vista X64 still isn't as great as it could be).

The only boards I am comfortable recommending right now are the Asus P5K and P5E series. Both are great overclockers that will run your E8400 right to it's limits and do well with just about any memory.

I found overclocking the Core 2 processor pretty easy, but then again I wasn't going for extreme FSB or memory performance.

I was able to overclock my Q6600 G0 to 3.6Ghz on the stock intel cooler without adding much voltage. I always lowered memory clocks to take that subsystem as a whole out of the stability equasion.
Running a stabilty test on all cores afterwards at least for a few hours worked pretty good.
After a while some extra vcore was needed but to get from 3.6ghz to 3.7ghz needed a whole lot more. This is the turning point.
When temps exceed 65°C it's pretty much the end of the line.

4Ghz on air for a Wolfdale is a good possibilty. A half decent chip will already do that.

Also take care of the northbridge on the board, these can get hot as well and are prone to stability issues when too hot.